Margerum Wine Company Santa Barbara County

Margerum Wine Company Santa Barbara County

Doug Margerum had been in the wine business for 20 years before establishing his own small volume boutique winery operation. He operates out of a small space just behind the BRANDER winery, outside Los Olivos. His is a garage sized operation and like many newly established producers he is creating handcrafted wines from a range of sites and terroirs. With the exception of his Columbia Valley Pinot Gris from Washington State including a second label Klickitat, the wines are from warmer climate Santa Barbara yet all the wines have a vibrancy and fresh poised character. Sauvignon Blanc Sybarite is from a number of sites in the Happy Canyon area of Santa Ynez. Among the range of reds there are Rhône red blends, two Grenaches and a Pinot Noir. The two Syrahs included below are particularly striking. The Colson Canyon bottling is the most subtle and least obvious but opens up with lovely fleshy fruit on the palate and impressive length. The Black Oak Vineyard is savoury and spicy with marked licorice and black pepper in abundance. They are structured and ageworthy. A top blend of Santa Barbara County Syrah’s, ÜBER, comes from a number of sites. (DM)

Masnaghetti Vineyard MapsAlessandro Masnaghetti is one of Italy’s leading wine journalists and aspartg from producing his monthly Enogea magazine has been spending the best part of the last 20 years painstakingly mapping in extraordinary detail, the vineyards in Italy’s leading wine production areas. On the back of the mapsRead More

Mark Thomas Lead-Free Crystal GlasswareMark Thomas director Thomas Zichtl says that its design aerates the wines just as well as much bigger glasses, while the double bend brings in additional stability due to a different stress ratio on the glass.Read More